'Baaghi 4' Review: A Tiger Shroff Hallucination You’ll Wish You Never Had

The coma that lasted seven months but felt like seven hours of screen time

The opening stretch sets up Ronnie’s return with short hair continuity and a laugh that is supposed to be maniacal but ends up sounding like the world’s strangest ringtone.

The film sells itself as a mix of mystery and romance, almost like Talaash, (at least in the first hour) except it is Talaash without the intrigue, the mood, or frankly the reason to exist.

An ACP is hell bent on Ronnie’s case for no comprehensible reason. Harnaaz is a doctor who wears glasses and suddenly become experts in everything, falls in love with the main man, Tiger Shroff's Ronnie in literally 2 dialogues, the same also happens with Sonam Bajwa by the way in a different situation through.

The editing jumps like a YouTube prank cut, giving you no time to register what you just saw. By the time the hour mark hits, you wonder if you are in your own hallucination.

Harnaaz Sandhu’s debut and the tragedy of bad direction

For Miss Universe turned actor Harnaaz Sandhu, this debut is the kind of meaty role that should feel like a launchpad. On paper she plays Alisha, a doctor with brains and heart.

On screen, she comes across like someone mouthing lines phonetically in rehearsal. The entire film is essentially her amazing and eternal life story with Tiger's Ronnie but her romantic graph is flatter than a heart monitor on zero, and the chemistry with Tiger could be used as a case study in medical textbooks under “absence.”

Ironically, her chemistry with Sanjay Dutt, who arrives deep into the second hour, is far better in just a few scenes.

That alone speaks volumes. She is raw, she tries, and she throws herself into it, but you cannot cover cracks this wide with effort alone. Still, credit to her for at least going for it while surrounded by a screenplay that collapses like soggy cardboard.

And coming to Sonam Bajwa, it is just plain sad that her first two Hindi films are Housefull 5 and Baaghi 4.

Tiger Shroff and the ghost of Heropanti

Tiger has now become his own meme. There are moments where he looks at Harnaaz and you can almost hear him thinking about his Heropanti days, when he too was figuring out line delivery.

He has improved since then but the gap is not nearly wide enough.

He laughs, he broods, he runs into fights with comic sound effects that belong in a Tom and Jerry episode.

His screen presence is undeniable, his physique is the franchise’s mascot, but when a character keeps repeating the same dialogue “mujhe chhod ke mat jao,” it begins to feel like the entire audience is also ready to chhod him.

Comedy that is not comedy

The film thinks it is sprinkling humor into the madness. Enter Sudesh Lehri with one liners, Shreyas Talpade doing his best to survive, and slapstick scenes that might have been rejected from Govinda’s 90s reels.

Upendra Limaye seems to be the only one truly having fun, going bonkers with wild expressions and crazy detours. His moments, absurd as they are, inject accidental entertainment into an otherwise joyless experience.

The sound design tries to make silly fights funny by adding cartoonish effects. Instead of laughing, you’re staring at the screen with the same expression you’d have if your WiFi went out during a live cricket final.

Sanjay Dutt enters, chaos doubles

One hour and ten minutes in, the film remembers it has Sanjay Dutt on the payroll. He storms in, wild-eyed and menacing, the way only he can.

He is a villain with madness in his bones and an energy that feels like Animal’s missing police force got transplanted into Baaghi 4. For a short while, you sense a pulse in the film.

But even Dutt’s entry cannot untangle the mess. His plot of staging an accident to win back Alisha is so boneheaded it undermines the menace he brings. Imagine risking the life of the woman you love in order to express that love.

It is cinema’s equivalent of proposing marriage by throwing your ring into the ocean and hoping she dives in to get it.

Songs that pop out of thin air

Bollywood films are no stranger to abrupt songs, but Baaghi 4 takes this to performance art levels.

One minute an ACP is investigating, the next he is dancing to “Laila” before interrogating suspects. “Mera Husn” is supposed to dazzle in Italy but is so clearly shot on a set that even Google Street View looks more authentic.

The music is not a break from the narrative; it is a reminder of how little narrative coherence exists.

At times you feel the makers used songs as a way to hit runtime quotas, not because they belonged to the story.

Violence, censorship and the catfish problem

Much was made of Baaghi 4 being the most violent installment yet. That turns out to be an illusion as fake as its Italy. The first hour is practically blood free.

Later, a few knife slashes and blood splatters arrive but hardly enough to live up to the hype. Strangely, you end up wishing there were more unhinged action sequences because at least then something would have happened.

Then there is the CBFC effect. The film is hacked up with so many cuts that the flow becomes jerky. Dialogues are overdubbed, sequences look like they’ve been stitched together in a hurry, and whatever little rhythm the makers aimed for is lost.

A bad film can sometimes be so bad it is entertaining, but when it is also censored into a patchwork, it becomes worse.

The tragedy of wasted potential

What hurts most is the potential. At its core, Baaghi 4 wanted to tell a story of love, betrayal, and madness. There were possibilities of exploring hallucinations, psychological layers, and an intense villain arc.

Instead, what we get is a circus of abrupt scenes, a doctor who turns painter overnight, a cop who dances before interrogating, and lovers with negative chemistry.

Sonam Bajwa pops in without explanation. Supporting women either splash around or faint. The editing is stitched like a quilt from three different movies. By the time the final twist lands, you are too exhausted to care.

Verdict: Lowering the bar until it is underground

Every time you think Baaghi 4 has reached rock bottom, it digs further. You keep adjusting your expectations, lowering them in the hope of finding something to hold on to, but the freefall never ends.

One decent action set piece aside, this is a film that tests patience more than it entertains.

It is sad because franchise fatigue can be managed with creativity. Action cinema thrives when the madness is embraced with confidence. Here, madness exists but without conviction, like a magician revealing his tricks before the show starts. The only real hallucination is believing this film was ever going to work.

If you skip Baaghi 4, you are not missing out on anything except two and a half hours of regret. The accident at the beginning is not just Ronnie’s, it is the franchise’s.